[JPMiller]

I watched a documentary that revisits Minneapolis, the Floyd death, and the Chauvin trial. There was some new information but much of it confirmed what I had picked up from several news sources at the time. I would like to discuss a couple of items.

I watched large portions of Derek Chauvin’s trial. There were brief mentions in questions and testimony of “maximal restraint” technique. The police chief and the head of training for the police department both testified that this technique was not taught in the department, and both testified that Chauvin’s knee at the base of Floyd’s neck as pictured in one of the most widely used photos taken by a bystander was not recognizable as any technique taught by the Minneapolis police department.

Yet, I think when this came up in the trial, even CNN interviewed a training officer who indicated that it was indeed part of the training and officers were re-trained in this technique annually. It was recognized as risky. The subject’s vital signs had to be monitored frequently. It could be continued only so long as the subject was actively resisting. That was why an ambulance was called within 45 seconds of the restraint and again at the highest urgency level a few minutes later. Floyd arguably appeared to be actively resisting in much of the body camera video. The ambulance arrived 20 minutes later despite the nearest fire station being 3 minutes away.

The body camera video clearly shows the four officers handling Mr. Floyd almost textbook perfectly as explained and depicted in the training manual on “maximal restraint.” Yet the body-camera video, the training manual, and the illustrations, depicting a knee in almost exactly the same position, used in that training were all excluded from the trial of Chauvin. 

I have seen enough video in various cases to know that the very fact of being restrained is enough to trigger someone to resist even if the subject’s intent is to comply. If you could not breathe you would struggle mightily to try to breathe. How are police going to interpret such a struggle? As an attempt to survive or a further attempt to get away?

Floyd began complaining that he could not breathe before the struggle inside the car and subsequent restraint on the ground. The level of drugs in Floyd’s system (as much as 3X a fatal dose for some people) were of types that suppress pulmonary function. Again, how are police going to interpret repeated pleas of “I can’t breathe”? As struggles of someone dying or as the hollow excuses they hear frequently from those trying to avoid arrest? In fact, another part of the Minneapolis police training included the assertion that if you can say “I can’t breathe,” then you can breathe, despite the growing realization by other police departments that it is not true. That is more testimony excluded from the trial.

It appears to me, and apparently to the producer of this documentary, that there is huge amount of lying going on. None of which excuses culpability.

Should such a high-risk form of restraint be used at all, much less taught by the Minneapolis police department? Is that why the department and prosecutor fought so hard to keep that discussion out of the trial? Or is it, as claimed by the producer of the documentary, that the department was willing to throw their officers under the bus to placate the mob’s racial hysteria? I suspect both. I have many other similar questions about this incident and trial.  

I was shocked by the almost total certainty expressed by friends, colleagues and family and seeming unwillingness to consider any evidence other than the bystander’s video. Now having peeked around the corner a little more, I think there was a lot more culpability on the part of the police department than I thought previously. However, that alone does not absolve the officers. It begs for questions to be answered that were not answered. Were vital signs monitored properly? Are police medically trained enough to know what to watch for? Was Chauvin callously ignoring Floyd’s pleas or ignoring them because he was trained to ignore them? Were bystanders ignored because the officers were trained to ignore them? Should Floyd even have been treated as a criminal or as someone in the midst of a medical crisis – even if of his own making? Are we demanding our police do things they can’t do? Or are power-tripping police, as some activists claim, deliberately violating people’s rights and consciously covering it up? Or are cowering officials dumping rational justice for “social justice” as claimed by this video?

/sb

[JimAllard]

Re: Joseph Peter Miller’s post 104015 of 12/30/23

I was shocked by the almost total certainty expressed by friends, colleagues and family and seeming unwillingness to consider any evidence other than the bystander’s video.

Certainty about what? What question(s) are you trying to answer?

There’s much that is self-evident from the video footage. It is self-evident that there was a serious lack of proper training of, and misconduct by, the police officers involved. It is self-evident that those officers (and probably the entire profession) do not understand the proper role of policing and the relationship between police and citizens. 

Whatever their training manuals say, one can say for certain, from the videos alone, that those officers’ actions are not compatible with what moral and competent policing requires.

/sb

[Harry Binswanger]

Re: Joseph Peter Miller’s post 104015 of 12/31/23

I’ve watched most of the video and it certainly shows that George Floyd was a real lowlife, but a trial is superior to a video. Videos are crafted. A trial is governed by very rational rules of procedure. When “evidence” is excluded from a trial, there’s a reason. When testimony is excluded from a trial, there’s a reason. When the defendant’s lawyer cannot object to such exclusion, there’s a reason.

Chauvin had an expert witness, Dr. Fowler, who conducted what looks like a vigorous defense of Floyd having died from other causes, not from Chauvin’s kneeling on his chest or neck. E.g., he testified:

“In my opinion, Mr. Floyd had a sudden cardiac arrhythmia . . . during his restraint and subdual by police,” he said.

Of course, there are bad trials, but a) there are appeals, and b) the burden of proof is on the person claiming a trial was done wrongly.

Now, burdens of proof can be met. (Sometimes we forget that and treat things as “case closed” before we’ve heard the other side.)

There can’t be trial by video. Personally, I have no idea whether the video can stand up to real factual and procedural scrutiny.

/sb

[StephenGrossman]

Re: Harry Binswanger’s post 147888 of 1/1/24

>vigorous defense of Floyd having died from other causes, not from Chauvin’s kneeling on his chest or neck. E.g., he testified:

“In my opinion, Mr. Floyd had a sudden cardiac arrhythmia . . . during his restraint and subdual by police,” he said.

How is sudden cardiac arrhythmia “other causes”? It’s not obvious. Could “kneeling on his chest or neck” cause sudden cardiac arrhythmia?

/sb

[MarkPeter]

Re: Jim Allard’s post 147895 of 12/31/23

There’s much that is self-evident from the video footage. It is self-evident that there was a serious lack of proper training of, and misconduct by, the police officers involved. It is self-evident that those officers (and probably the entire profession) do not understand the proper role of policing and the relationship between police and citizens.

I completely disagree. Those are judgments that involve inferences about logistics, context, and intent. What we saw in the video was a man being restrained, saying he couldn’t breathe, then going limp, with officers seemingly unconcerned and taking no action to help him.

My gut-take on first viewing was that something unusual was going on, mostly because of the demeanor of the officers. I could imagine one rogue police officer assaulting or even murdering a suspect, but probably only if he thought no one else could see. Perhaps two partners in a similar situation. But there were, I believe, four officers at this scene. There was a crowd watching, making videos. There was regular radio contact, with each decision being reported. And all four officers had a “business as usual” demeanor. Clearly they all thought they were following procedure and not doing anything wrong. And yes, that could be an indictment of the whole department or even of policing in general, but another more likely explanation would be that the officers didn’t think the restraint was harming Floyd, and they were merely trying to keep him subdued while waiting for the ambulance. I would want to know how that judgment was reached, and if there were any good reasons supporting it, before damning the officers as incompetent, negligent, malicious, or murderous.

Some of the relevant questions I had were:

Why the severe restraint?
Was there a prior struggle, and if so, how violent was it, and how successful had Floyd been at fighting off officers?
What was the physical nature of the restraint being used? How much pressure was being exerted and was his airflow actually blocked? (There was some evidence it was not.)
What, if any, were the relevant protocols, and were they being followed or violated?
Perhaps most importantly, what did Chauvin think was happening when Floyd stopped talking and stopped resisting, and why didn’t he switch gears, check for pulse, breathing, etc.?

My conversations with others were much like Mr. Miller’s. While I hadn’t made my mind up (and still haven’t) about misconduct or possibly even manslaughter, I saw no direct evidence of anything resembling “murder” or “racism,” and yet those words were tossed around freely by many, including journalists and public commentators.

*sb

[Author]

Posts